Black Classicism in the United States

First defined by Michele Valerie Ronnick in the second edition of Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, edited by Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates Jr. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999) and online at Oxford African American Studies Center, Black classicism (also known as Afro-Classicism or Classica Africana) is the history and analysis of the influence of Greco-Roman civilization upon the professional and creative lives of people of African descent. It is a division of a larger field known as classical reception, which examines the influence of Greco-Roman culture on people and places throughout the world after the end of antiquity. For hundreds of years, any person who wished to be considered educated and/or be part of the institutions of the Western world had training in Greek and Latin. This was true for many people of African descent as well as those of Mediterranean and European descent. A broad range of disparate material archived and/or published over many years in journals, newspapers, books, school catalogues, encyclopedias, and various handbooks provides vital evidence with which to understand the achievements made by people of African descent vis-à-vis classical studies. Using this evidence, scholars are now documenting this important and multifaceted dynamic. Although a comprehensive, full-blown academic study has yet to be made, it is clear that the history and culture of Greece and Rome have had an important impact upon people of African descent and can be seen in contemporary Afro-diasporic studies and Afro-European literatures.